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Tuesday, October 9, 2012

What is Marketing Plan? What are the key points to remind when you are designing a marketing plan? How marketing plan is developed? Examples of marketing plan? Marketing plan templates, Marketing business plan? Marketing Strategy? Marketing Plan Strategy?

Whenever you are making marketing plan for and an organization this are the some question arise in your mind that how marketing plan is design? What is marketing plan?.

Here is the answer to your question on my an other blog which is related to marketing business?

MBA in Marketing, books of Philip Kotler

I'm making my career in Marketing and for that purpose i want to
gather all contents,theory,concept of Marketing at one place.This blog
will help me out in my study and if in future i have to revise any
concept of Marketing then i can go through all that information by my
own blog and it might help out other as well in their study.

This blog provide all relevant information about Marketing and its basic concept.

How to reach the customer?
How to acquire the potential customer?
How to develop relationship with the customer?
How to retain the customer?
How to inspire the new customer?

The customer life cycle revolve around the customer needs,wants,satisfaction. How the firm response to the behavior of

Marketing Mix

The basic concept of marketing is Marketing Mix.

By the help of marketing mix one should determine that how to market the product and the launching procedure.

Marketing Mix diagram,Marketing Concept,marketingconcept.blogspot.com

Marketing Mix

The basic concept of marketing is Marketing Mix.

By the help of marketing mix one should determine that how to market the product and the launching procedure.

Marketing Mix diagram,Marketing Concept,marketingconcept.blogspot.com

Marketing Mix

The basic concept of marketing is Marketing Mix.

By the help of marketing mix one should determine that how to market the product and the launching procedure.

Marketing Mix diagram,Marketing Concept,marketingconcept.blogspot.com

Marketing Mix

The basic concept of marketing is Marketing Mix.

By the help of marketing mix one should determine that how to market the product and the launching procedure.

Marketing Mix diagram,Marketing Concept,marketingconcept.blogspot.com

Core Marketing Concepts

Core
marketing concepts depends on the needs,wants and demands of the
consumer after that producer produce the product and deliver the product
to consumer by satisfying their wants,create value,maintain quality for
long term relationship. In exchange the producer make profit and try to
capture market.

Marketing Plan Outline

I. Executive Summary

A high-level summary of the marketing plan.

II. The Challenge

Brief description of product to be marketed and associated goals, such as sales figures and strategic goals.

IV. Market Segmentation

V. Alternative Marketing Strategies

List and discuss the alternatives that were considered before
arriving at the recommended strategy. Alternatives might include
discontinuing a product, re-branding, positioning as a premium or value product, etc.

VI. Selected Marketing Strategy

Discuss why the strategy was selected, then the marketing mix decisions (4 P's) of product, price, place (distribution), and promotion.

Product

The product decisions should consider the product's advantages and how they will be leveraged. Product decisions should include:

Brand name

Quality

Scope of product line

Warranty

Packaging

Price

Discuss pricing strategy, expected volume, and decisions for the following pricing variables:

Logistics, including transportation, warehousing, and order fulfilment

Promotion

Advertising, including how much and which media.

Public relations

Promotional programs

Budget; determine break-even point for any additional spending

Projected results of the promotional programs

VII. Short & Long-Term Projections

The selected strategy's immediate effects, expected long-term
results, and any special actions required to achieve them. This section
may include forecasts of revenues and expenses as well as the results of
a break-even analysis.

VIII. Conclusion

The division of a market into different homogeneous groups of consumers is known as market segmentation.
Rather than offer the same marketing mix
to vastly different customers, market segmentation makes it possible
for firms to tailor the marketing mix for specific target markets, thus
better satisfying customer needs. Not all elements of the marketing mix
are necessarily changed from one segment to the next. For example, in
some cases only the promotional campaigns would differ.
A market segment should be:

measurable

accessible by communication and distribution channels

different in its response to a marketing mix

durable (not changing too quickly)

substantial enough to be profitable

A market can be segmented by various bases, and industrial markets
are segmented somewhat differently from consumer markets, as described
below.

Consumer Market Segmentation

A basis for segmentation is a factor that varies among groups within a
market, but that is consistent within groups. One can identify four
primary bases on which to segment a consumer market:

Geographic segmentation is based on regional variables such as region, climate, population density, and population growth rate.

Demographic segmentation is based on variables such as age, gender, ethnicity, education, occupation, income, and family status.

Psychographic segmentation is based on variables such as values, attitudes, and lifestyle.

Behavioral segmentation is based on variables such as usage rate and patterns, price sensitivity, brand loyalty, and benefits sought.

The optimal bases on which to segment the market depend on the particular situation and are determined by marketing research, market trends, and managerial judgment.

Business Market Segmentation

While many of the consumer market segmentation bases can be applied
to businesses and organizations, the different nature of business
markets often leads to segmentation on the following bases:

Geographic segmentation
- based on regional variables such as customer concentration, regional
industrial growth rate, and international macroeconomic factors.

Customer type - based on factors such as the size of the organization, its industry, position in the value chain, etc.

Buyer behavior - based on factors such as loyalty to suppliers, usage patterns, and order size.

Profiling the Segments

The identified market segments are summarized by profiles, often
given a descriptive name. From these profiles, the attractiveness of
each segment can be evaluated and a target market segment selected.

Marketing Strategy

The marketing concept of building an organization around the
profitable satisfaction of customer needs has helped firms to achieve
success in high-growth, moderately competitive markets. However, to be
successful in markets in which economic growth has leveled and in which
there exist many competitors who follow the marketing concept, a
well-developed marketing strategy is required. Such a strategy considers
a portfolio of products and takes into account the anticipated moves of
competitors in the market.

The Case of Barco
In late 1989, Barco N.V.'s projection systems division was faced with
Sony's surprise introduction of a better graphics projector. Barco had
been perceived as a leader, introducing high quality products first and
targeting a niche market that was willing to pay a higher price.
Being a smaller company, Barco could not compete on price, so it
traditionally pursued a skimming strategy in the graphics projector
market, where it had a 55% market share of the small market. Barco's
overall market share for all types of projectors was only 4%.
Even though Barco's market was mainly in graphics projectors, the
company had not introduced a new graphics projector in over two years.
Instead, it was spending a large portion of its R&D budget on video
projector products. However, video projectors were not Barco's market.
Barco's engineers had been working long hours on their new projector
that would not be as good as Sony's. Some people thought they should not
stop work on that product since the engineers' morale would suffer
after being told how important it was to work hard to get the product
out. However, even considering the morale of the product team, it would
not have been a good idea to introduce a product that was inferior to
that of Sony. Barco wisely stopped working on the inferior product and
put a major effort in developing a projector that outperformed Sony's.
The Barco case illustrates several marketing strategy concepts:

Price / Selling Effort Strategies: A firm that follows a skimming strategy
seeks to be the first to introduce a product with very good
performance, selling it to the innovator market segment and charging a
premium price for it. It makes as much profit as possible, then moves on
when the competition arrives. The price is likely to fall over time as
competition is encountered. Such a skimming strategy contrasts with a penetrating strategy,
which seeks to gain market share by sacrificing short-term profits, and
increasing the price over time as market share is gained.

Competitors have certain strengths and abilities. To succeed, a firm must leverage its own unique abilities.

A firm should prepare defensive strategies before potential
threats arrive. If the competition surprises a firm with the
introduction of a vastly superior product, the firm should resist the
temptation to proceed with its mediocre product. A firm never should
introduce a product that is obsolete when it hits the market.

The competition's probable response to a firm's actions should be considered carefully.

Marketing Research for Strategic Decision Making
The two most common uses of marketing research
are for diagnostic analysis to understand the market and the firm's
current performance, and opportunity analysis to define any unexploited
opportunities for growth.
Marketing research studies include consumer studies, distribution
studies, semantic scaling, multidimensional scaling, intelligence
studies, projections, and conjoint analysis. A few of these are outlined
below.

Semantic scaling: a very simple rating of how consumers perceive the
physical attributes of a product, and what the ideal values of those
attributes would be. Semantic scaling is not very accurate since the
consumers are polled according to an ordinal ranking so mathematical
averaging is not possible. For example, 8 is not necessarily twice as
much as 4 in an ordinal ranking system. Furthermore, each person uses
the scale differently.

Multidimensional scaling (MDS) addresses the problems associated
with semantic scaling by polling the consumer for pair-wise comparisons
between products or between one product and the ideal. The assumption is
that while people cannot report reliably which attributes drive their
choices, they can report perceptions of similarities between brands.
However, MDS analyses do not indicate the relative importance between
attributes.

Conjoint analysis infers the relative importance of attributes by
presenting consumers with a set of features of two hypothetical products
and asking them which product they prefer. This question is repeated
over several sets of attribute values. The results allow one to predict
which attributes are the more important, the combination of attribute
values that is the most preferred. From this information, the expected
market share of a given design can be estimated.

Multi-Product Resource Allocation
The most common resource allocation methods are:

Percentage of sales

Executive judgement

All-you-can-afford

Match competitors

Last year based

Another method is called decision calculus. Managers are asked four questions:
What would sales be with:

no sales force

half the current effort

50% greater effort

a saturation level of effort.

From these answers, one can determine the parameters of the S-curve
response function and use linear programming techniques to determine
resource allocations.
Decision algorithms that result in extreme solutions, such as
allocating most of the sales force to one product while neglecting
another product often do not yield practical solutions.
For mature products, sales increase very little as a function of
advertising expenditures. For newer products however, there is a very
positive correlation.Portfolio models may be used to allocate resources among major product lines or business units. The BCG growth-share matrix is one such model.

New Product Diffusion Curve
As a new product diffuses into the market, some types of consumers
such as innovators and early adopters buy the product before other
consumers. The product adoption follows a trajectory that is shaped like
a bell curve and is known as the product diffusion curve.
The marketing strategy should take this adoption curve into account and
address factors that influence the rate of adoption by the different
types of consumers.

Dynamic Product Management Strategies
Two fundamental issues of product management are whether to pioneer
or follow, and how to manage the product over its life cycle.
Order of market entry is very important. In fact, the forecasted
market share relative to the pioneering brand is the pioneering brand's
share divided by the square root of the order of entry. For example, the
brand that entered third is forecasted to have 1/√3 times the market
share of the first entrant (Marketing Science, Vol. 14, No. 3, Part 2 of 2, 1995.) This rule was determined empirically.
The pioneering advantage is obtained from both the supply and demand
side. From the supply side, there are raw material advantages, better
experience effects to provide a cost advantage, and channel preemption.
On the demand side, there is the advantage of familiarity, the chance to
set a standard, and the choice of perceptual position.
Once a firm gains a pioneering advantage, it can maintain it by
improving the product, creating a standard, advertise that it was the
first,
and introduce a new product in the market that may cannibalize the first
but deter other firms from entering.
There also are disadvantages to being the pioneer. Being first allows
a competitor to leapfrog the early technology. The incumbent develops
inertia in its R&D and may not be a flexible as newcomers.
Developing an industry has costs that the pioneer must bear alone, and
the way the industry develops and its potential size are not
deterministic.
There are four classic price/selling effort strategies:

Selling Effort

Price

Low

High

Low

Necessity Goods

Classic Skim StrategyVulnerable to new entrants

High

Classic Penetration Strategy

Luxury Goods

In general, products are clustered in the low-low or high-high
categories. If a product is in a mixed category, after introduction it
will tend to move to the low-low or high-high one.
Increasing the breadth of the product line as several advantages. A
firm can better serve multiple segments, it can occupy more of the
distributors' shelf space, it offers customers a more complete
selection, and it preempts competition. While a wider range of products
will cause a firm to cannibalize some of its own sales, it is better to
do so oneself rather than let the competition do so.
The drawbacks of broad product lines are reduced volume for each
brand (cannibalization), greater manufacturing complexity, increased
inventory, more management resources required, more advertising (or less
per brand), clutter and confusion in advertising for both customers and
distributors.
To increase profits from existing brands, a firm can improve its
production efficiency, increase the demand through more users, more
uses, and more usage. A firm also can defend its existing base through
line extensions (expand on a current brand), flanker brands (new brands
in an existing product area), and brand extensions.